Helping you achieve your business aspirations. No BS. Real changes & fresh ideas that can take you to where you want to be, from someone who understands and has been there himself.

Sometimes trying to achieve your business goals can be clouded by the day to day operations or technical difficulties. Matthew can help you with mentoring or one-on-one business consulting. Matthew is extremely skilled in both eBay and Amazon marketplaces and has worked for two auction management companies.

Matthew has a Business Consultation page and you can contact him on his dedicated Contact Matthew page.

Urgent: Dealing Amazon Pending Orders

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Firstly apologies, I’ve know about Amazon’s pending orders for a long time now and they can be dangerous. I should have considered their impact at this time of the year earlier. I never suggest anything as ‘urgent’ that I cover here, but this is the exception…

What Are Amazon Pending Orders?

Amazon pending orders, are orders that have one or more issues with either the customer or the payment for the order. This means that there is an order that has been taken by Amazon, but not yet been made available for download and/or processing.

Taking a direct extract from the Amazon help system, pending orders are explained below:

Orders in pending status indicate an issue with the customer’s payment method. Those orders are not in a shippable status, and should not be shipped, even if the buyer contacts you directly. Pending orders will not have confirm and cancel buttons in Manage Orders, and they will not appear in either the Order Report or the Unshipped Orders Report.

Once an order is in a shippable status, the confirm and cancel buttons will appear in Manage Orders and the order will appear in both the Order Report and the Unshipped Orders Report. At that point, the order should be shipped and the shipment confirmed in Manage Orders or with a feed.

Note that Amazon assumes the risk of buyer non-payment for every order in your Unshipped Orders Reports or that has confirm and cancel buttons in Manage Orders. Of course, just as now, there may be circumstances where payment may later need to be refunded, for example when the buyer does not receive the order, or it is not as described.

Why Are Amazon Pending Orders Dangerous?

Using the Amazon help explanation of pending orders, I’ve highlighted the key points above “orders are not in a shippable status” and “will not appear in either the Order Report or the Unshipped Orders Report“. To clarify such orders are dangerous because:

  • They’re sat in a different queue
  • Stock may or may not be allocated to such orders
  • They don’t appear in the standard (or any) reports that can be exported

Pending orders are both a liability & risk to the business. Such orders can sit in this status for weeks sometimes, however at this time when there is a higher velocity of sales than normal the low risk of these turn into a serious risk.

Stock can be locked in Amazon orders and 3rd parties may not know of them, thus keeping the stock available on other channels and open the business to higher chances of overselling. The orders are not shown in the order reports and any system, whether it’s the sellers own or a 3rd party can overlook these and not account for them in the current stock levels.

The Scale of Amazon Pending Orders

Now this is curious, I checked on four Amazon Seller Central accounts this morning, roughly their account types were like this:

Average Order Value Order Velocity
Very High (over £150) Medium
Medium (below £50) High
Medium  (below £30) Medium
Very Low (below £10) High

Now my logic beforehand would have indicated that both the “very high value” and the “high order velocity” for the “very low” orders would have been the two accounts that displayed issues with pending orders.

However I was wrong, both these accounts had very few pending orders (one had 3 and the other 11). It was both medium order value accounts with moderate to high volumes of sales that had the most number of pending orders, one account had over 150 of them and the other was over 50.

However they ALL had pending orders, some were showing back to late November and the numbers differed from account to account (they’re four unrelated accounts in four different product verticals).

How Do You Locate Pending Orders?

Locating Amazon pending orders is relatively straight forwards, there are several paths and I have also included a direct link to them as well:

  • After logging in to your Seller Central account, on the right column, scroll down to the section called “Your Orders (Amazon.ext)”, under the section called “Seller Fulfilled” there is a line for pending orders and the count is a link
  • From the top menu, hover on “Orders” and select “Manage Orders”, then click on “Advanced search” and select a date range (I’d suggest 365 days for the first time) and set the “Order Status” drop down box to “Pending” and hit search
  • A direct link to the last 180 days of Amazon pending orders is here and if you want to search for less or longer change the value of the “preSelectedRange” attribute

How To Handle Pending Orders?

Firstly the good news…

3rd parties such as eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor & Linnworks use Amazon’s newer API called MWS (Marketplace Web Services).

Why is this important? Included in the calls is the ability to locate and account for pending orders. This allows them (3rd parties) to allocate stock lines that are held in pending orders so that they’re not allocated for sale on other sales channels (like eBay or websites for example). If you’re using either of these then you have nothing to worry about.

This is of course assuming that you have setup MWS with these platforms. If there is any doubt at all, contact them immediately.

Now the bad news…

If you are using the order reports from Amazon to process your orders either manually, through a 3rd party or through AMTU (Amazon Merchant Transport Utility) then you are likely to have a potential issue.

The ability to integrate to MWS is there but requires time & a developer, this is ruled out. The same goes for integrating to any of the fore-mentioned 3rd party platforms. So you’re stuck in a limbo period.

Also this only affects merchants that either use a virtual business model or are also selling the same products on other platforms/marketplaces. If you only sell on Amazon and work in a stocked business model, then you can ignore this completely.

Dealing With Pending Orders Manually

However if your business does sell its product ranges elsewhere or uses parts of a virtual product model, then I suggest the following:

  1. Check the pending orders 2-3 times per day, once in the morning, then around lunch and once in the evening (this depends upon the velocity of your orders and the amount of pending orders you’re seeing)
  2. You can copy/paste the pending orders list to excel (it doesn’t paste that well, but its workable)
  3. Take a few minutes to highlight new pending orders that have appeared and allocate stock levels accordingly.
  4. Track orders exiting to real orders and orders that are removed

A 5th option which may or may not be an option for your business (and I suggest you do so, because of the complicated risk factors with Amazon as we need to allow as much lea-way for returns and cancelled orders post Christmas) is that you actually order the products in the pending orders and allocate them to one side.

Summary

Amazon pending orders can be tricky, especially if your business is not using the MWS API or a 3rd party that uses this to communicate with Amazon & have that part dealt with effectively.

Stock can be allocated without the ability to let other selling channels know and this opens your business to a risk of overselling and the “fun” that stems from cancelled orders.

If you’ve not read this article yet (there is a video too), I cover some core essentials on how Amazon reacts to marketplace sellers. You never cross Amazon because if it was a human, it would be a woman and she is a ………

If there is only one takeaway from this article, go check your Amazon orders right now for pending ones, be aware of them and you can do this via this link.

Why I See eCommerce Differently. I see Data & Lots of It Too!

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Introduction

When I look at a website, an eBay item, an Amazon item or pretty much anywhere now, what “I see” when looking at such products is starkly different to most. In this article, I share with you what I see and also why you should be thinking along the same lines also.

I would class myself as one of the lucky few that see the world of eCommerce differently. I see beyond the pair of boots, shoes, phone or dress and see a multi-tiered inventory structure that sits behind it. I also see beyond a single businesses perspective and have a unique view of many and can combine this into a single view, that’s not distorted by a single viewpoint.

In this article I share with you what I see, to help you understand the data that is sat behind the inventory that you interact with daily and why I strongly feel and know that data is the lifeblood of an eCommerce business.

What I See When I look at an eBay Item

eBay Item Data Points BreakdownWorking from the top down, I have highlighted the data points that I see in an eBay listing in the image to the right (to help the full version is here) and I’ve broken these down in the bullet points below:

  • eBay Categorisation
    But not just that, two eBay categories, the category numbers and the listing requirements for the categories being used.
  • The main image
    This isn’t just ‘an’ image, its an image that meets the requirements to cause the highlighted bar beneath it for zoom and enlargement which can only occur when the primary image is over certain dimensions. Also, the main image has been worked on to show the variations in the listing and also watermarked too.
  • Additional Images
    The images in this example have also been sent to eBay and using their hosting services, plus they have been worked on externally to get them to an excellent level (eg backgrounds removed)
  • Listing Title
    A keyword rich title that has been created to maximise the exposure from users searching. It’s also worth noting another data point here would have been the subtitle, but this listing is missing it.
  • Item Condition
    The condition of products has become mandatory in numerous categories now and there are several options for this.
  • Variations
    These require a special mention and the data structure sat behind this cannot be comprehensively covered in this article (and I am working on an article specifically dedicated to this alone). However for now, understand that what we are looking at is a master/container inventory record that has the core details about the inventory line, however its variations (and associated stock levels & pricing) are shown in both the “Exact Colour” and “Size” variation boxes. Some categories require for these variations to be labelled precisely, however other categorise the inventory data can be more flexible.
  • Quantity
    As this is a listing with variations, each variant has its own stock level, for example a small sized item may only have 2 in stock, whereas medium and large of a specific colour will most likely have different stock levels as sized/colour/variations all tend to sell in differing velocities.
  • Price
    This listings price is straight forwards, there is only one price for the entire style of products being shown. However, each variant may have a different price associated with it and attached to the data structure sat behind it.
  • Postage Variations
    I don’t see just £2.99, I see a tiered pricing structure that is likely to have come either a business rule for a templating system of some kind, that is displaying the default shipping method (as an eBay internal code) and a value. Plus the potential for 2 more domestic options to be selected, up to 3 more options for international and additional rules or specifics attached to them (eg a rate that is set specifically for Ireland). I also see either the postcode requirement or sellers location, along with the despatching country from a table of options, so that such an ETA of delivery can be made effectively.
  • Delivery ETA
    With each listing a data field needs to be set so that eBay are able to show the estimated delivery time based upon the sum of the sellers handling time and the default handling/delivery time of the shipping service selected as the primary shipping option by the merchant. This is why we see 2-3 working days as an ETA, not 3-4 if the merchant had included an extra day for their internal handling.
  • Payments
    Again I don’t only see the option that has been set to “true” to accept PayPal, I also see two more options, the first is that the merchant has added in the additional payment option of postal order/bankers draft, but also there is an account wide setting in their account that is set to “true” and thus displays PayPal as their preferred payment method.
  • Revisions
    This listing is handy as it shows that the merchant has also included revisions to the listing. This could have been manual edits or the entire reposting of the listing data itself from a 3rd party application and eBay have kept a record of this.
  • Item Specifics
    The item specifics being shown in this eBay listing are relatively light compared to what could have been filled out. Looking at these I see additional fields that can have either fixed options to variable options completed for them. Taking brand for example, eBay suggest a list of common brands to use, however in this case the merchant has selected to use “Unbranded” as their data point.
  • Listing Template
    This is hard to explain if you’ve had no interactions with templating based system. Looking at the eBay listing below the item specifics line where the bulk of the inventory data is displayed, the logo and all the stuff that makes it pretty, I see a HTML template that is most likely laced with keywords that are populated when the listing is sent to eBay from multiple data points.For example the description is pulled from data field, the smaller item specifics table from multiple data points, the image, even the description from another source and the about us/payment/shipping/returns tabs of data all being brought in from multiple locations, combined together and posted to eBay as the final finished product we’re now looking at.The same goes for the eBay categories down the left, I don’t see categories, I see a table of category names and eBay shop category ID’s that have just been spilled out into a human usable interface. Depending upon the 3rd party application that is being used to create the actual listing, I also see post listing logic. For example in more complex listings there may be IF/NOT logic that defines what is and what is not being displayed. Such functionality can completely change the entire way the data is displayed in the template and the final listing we’re looking at.
  • 3rd Party Attributes
    This listing has two, the first from the team at DZine-Hub and the second from eBay’s Selling Manager Pro.  Its not uncommon for several 3rd parties to be attributed at this part of the listing.
  • Business Seller Information
    While not posted with the entire eBay listing. I see this data coming from the settings that the merchant has specified in their eBay account. Again this is just data fields that have made it to the final version of the listing we’re looking at.
  • Returns Policy
    Having a different view from is also highlighted here, this data could have been sourced from an eBay default in Selling Manager Pro or its come from a 3rd party tool that has stored this data also as a default, most likely with the other template data.

You should now have an idea on how I see eBay listings and I can assure you its not in the same manner you have been thinking about it. I glaze over the product actually being sold and look at the use (or abuse) of the data that actually made the presented item(s) we’re looking at right now.

Ready for the next one? Lets continue…

What I See When I look at an Amazon Item

Amazon is special, well different when directly compared to eBay inventory data. Its different because the inventory data could have come from multiple sources, Amazon directly, that of merchants, a combination of both Amazon and multiple merchants and also user data as well.

To break up an Amazon listing into a more clearly defined image for you to understand, I have used two colours for this image and again the full version can be found here.

  • Red is merchant or Amazon product data
  • Blue is user generated data

Amazon Inventory Data BreakdownMerchant / Amazon Inventory Data

For this item specifically, because its already been created, then it could be looked at much more simply. What I mean by this is that due to the nature of how Amazon’s product database works, the merchant doesn’t need to know all the attributes about the inventory record, just the essentials to enable it to be sold.

These essentials are:

  • ASIN
  • Merchants SKU
  • Inventory Count
  • Selling Price

This makes selling on Amazon for merchants exceptionally easy. If they can match their data to an existing inventory record then listing a single or many thousands of items is very straight forwards.

However for completeness for this article, I’m going to assume that this item has been created by a single merchant so that we can explore the data sat behind what we’re looking at in full.

Merchant / Amazon Inventory Data

This section relates to all the red highlighted content in the image to the right.

Running with the idea that we (as a merchant) need to create this record from the beginning, when I see this listing, I see the following:

  • Root Categorisation
    Amazon works slightly differently when it comes to inventory data creation. Each root category (Apparel in this instance) has its own data requirements and then below that something called “Browse Nodes” which can be compared to eBay’s category structure.By the very nature of this item (being a shoe) its in Apparel category and is actually a sub version just for Shoes. The “Browse Nodes” don’t actually appear in this listing, but they’re there stored in the background.
  • Product Title & Search Keywords
    The product title is just one factor in the items being found in Amazon’s search, underneath this are up to 5 search keywords that essentially extend the title further. So just looking at the products title, I not only see a listing title, I see 5 data fields that are sat with this, they’re just not shown in the front interface.
  • Pricing
    I’ve purposefully chosen this record because there is a variation in not only the products (size and colour) but also because there is a variation in pricing from the numerous merchants that are offering this product for sale on Amazon.Unlike the eBay example where it was just a single merchants product being shown, we are looking at the cumulative of multiple data sets and multiple merchants all hijacking the same record to sell the variants of this product. As such we can see there is a price range from £23.50 to £86.84.While on the topic of pricing, I see much further. I see a minimum price and I see a maximum price, I also see that there is likely to be repricing software running in the background that also needs these and maybe extra data points to move the pricing around to achieve a higher, but profitable number of sales for each merchant. I also see such 3rd party applications with large data sets and complex rules, all in the aim of profitability for such merchants.
  • Variations
    With regards to Amazon there are four variation types, none, size, colour and size & colour. We’re looking at the latter and we have both size and colour variants being shown.However it doesn’t just stop are text fields from defined lists,  if you look at the colour options, you’ll see that some of these have smaller images, these are called swatches. When I see these I see additional data that has been processed by one or more merchants to improve the visibility for the user when making a selection.
  • Main Image(s)
    Again assuming that the merchant is to be posting this entire product and its variants from scratch, I see numerous images all held in data cells, but not just images of black shoes, I see rows and rows of data, each with their own sets of images and hopefully swatch images (for the variant) with them as well.
  • Attributes /Product Specifications
    Different Amazon root categories (not browse nodes) have their own requirements and available options for specification extra data that appears in both the product specifications section, but over-spills to the product details  as well, weight is a good example of this along with the item model number.
  • Bullet Points (missing from this example)
    Missing from this item are the display of upto 10 bullet points that describe this product further. Most merchants include just 5, however its possible to include many more than this via the API. Again all I see is cells of data that are being posted by a merchant and in this case not being displayed back to the user interface.
  • Product Description
    Amazon by far as the most primitive (or restricted depends on how you look at it) method of accepting descriptions. Again this is just a chunk of data that may just be a wedge of plain text or it could be the combination of multiple data fields being joined together to make a description. This product is quite boring in this respect as there are some fabulous examples of merchants that I have worked with to bring in numerous data points to the description to make the product more effective.

User Generated Data

This section relates to all the blue highlighted content in the image above.

Amazon is again special when it comes to product data because as shown by the sheer amount of blue in the image I’ve included there is an awful lot of user generated data that while not pure to the merchant side of inventory data, is when it comes to when the product data is displayed back to the user (especially after time, as more and more user data gets added to the original inventory data).

  • Reviews & Likes
    I’ve joined these together, although they are separate parts. Likes is just a counter of users hitting a like button, however reviews… they’re special. This is user generated content that can be absolutely lethal in the conversion of products shown on the marketplace. Personally I have bought expensive goods on the reviews of people I have not and will not ever meet. However if they’re bad then that’s pretty much sealed the fate of the product.
  • Customer Images & Videos
    The example above is actually a semi-decent one, as beneath the main image there is a link to 6 user generated images, these are images that users/customers have uploaded and have been added to this product. You can also add video content to products too.
  • Tags / Lists
    Lists aren’t really shown in the example, however an additional component to an Amazon inventory record is in the inclusion of customer generated wish lists, however tags are shown and these are again generated by users to help others locate similar products.
  • Purchase/View Driven Data
    Now this is where Amazon excels. Using the viewing and sales data (probably other sources too), they manipulate this data back to add several key features to a products detail page, the most obvious is the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”, however bundles can also be automatically created and shown to the user (not shown in this example), along with numerous other sections such as “What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?” and other related products.
    The data that is driving this may not entirely driven by the actual product data a merchant(s) first created the record with, but multiple other data points to make the final detail page more productive to the conversion of the viewer.

What You Should See

It doesn’t matter if I’m browsing for a book on Amazon or in a “real” retail store, I can’t help it, I just see data. That can of beans, its a SKU and it has attributes (shelf quantity, store quantity, warehouse quantity, distributor quantities, variation, container size, price, cost, margin to name but a few) . That book I just downloaded to the kindle, its a SKU and it has attributes. The parcels that arrived this morning, just a by-product of inventory data.

This is only inventory related and only the tip of the iceberg. When you mix in multiple data sources, the complexities of data that needs to be ported to not just one marketplace, but many and then the order related data that then is obtained by making inventory data visible, business processes, supply & distribution chains let alone the countless other messes of data such activities creates. It gets deep and fast.

The way I look at the world of eCommerce and product driven commerce, looks completely different to most and I hope I have given you a glimpse of what I see when I see a lonely product shown on a website or just a tin of beans on a shelf. What do you see?

How To Get on eBay Daily Deals

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“How To Get on eBay Daily Deals” and its deviations appear to be a common question that are driving people here, but I’ve never actually answered the question directly, only indicated in an earlier article that you can create your own using the eBay shops tags in the article called How to Make Your Own eBay Daily Deals & Weekly Deals.

In this article, I cover the ground around daily deals and try and be constructive as possible around helping you try and obtain a daily deal on eBay.

What Are eBay Daily Deals?

Today OnlyeBay daily deals have been around for a number of years now, there was a slight pause in these just before Christmas 2010 and they’ve been on the site since their re-introduction.

They’re focused towards amazing deals on products that also have a depth and desirability towards eBay users, whether you like it or not, most top spots are taken by larger outlet sellers who can deal with large volumes of transactions and have the inventory depth & buying power to deliver such deals.

Typically there are only two deals per day and are subsidised by weekly deals, that last funnily enough for a week. This is an important note to make, when we get to the pivotal question later, there are daily and weekly deals. One of these formats can be more productive than the other and it’s not the one you immediately suspect.

When we look at some of the recent daily deals further on in this article, you’ll notice that some of the numbers are quite attractive, to give you a wider picture, the volume of sales created by eBay are often dwarfed by that of sites that are wholly dedicated to daily deals, such as Groupon and LivingSocial.

Over 170 SoldCurious question, as what’s been featured in an eBay daily deal has been varied to say the least. From bikes to shorts, wellies to TV’s, XBOX’s to perfumes, it’s all been on a daily deal.

It’s not very well known, but there is an RSS feed of the eBay daily deals that can be found here: http://deals.ebay.co.uk/DailyDeal.rss this feed is very handy, especially if you keep track of it in a RSS reader such as Google Reader, as it’ll keep a history all the deals, so you can go back over them and see what’s sold and what’s not.

Note: Its not unknown that several companies keep track of the daily deals on a daily basis to leverage the sales information that they find through this channel and for other reasons.

Looking at the last couple of daily deals, there have been some real flops and some winners. I’ve put these into a table to make displaying the data a little easier on the eye.

Recent eBay Daily Deals

eBay Title Value # Sold Total
DGM ETV-2493WHC 24″ Ultra Thin LED TV DVD FULL HD 1080p USB PVR Freeview  £139.99  461 £64,535.39
E4 MENS STONE ROCK AND REVIVAL DESIGNER DROP CROTCH CHINOS ALL SIZES UK RRP £55
(2 Listings)		  £17.99 288 +
207		 £8,905.05
Women’s Nike Revolutionary Support Sports Bra 226015 ***3 Colors Available***  £7.99 3312 £26,462.88
Smith & Jones Marques Hoody
(6 listings)		  £14.99 624 + 427 + 370 + 284 + 242 + 232 £32,663.21
Kylie Minogue Sweet Darling Eau de Toilette Spray 15ml  £6.99  95 £664.05
South Double Breasted Duffle Coat In Mustard  £9.99  184 £1,838.16
BUSBI BOLT 32GB USB 3.0 SILVER MEMORY STICK FLASH PEN KEY DRIVE HIGH SPEED NEW  £24.99  18 £449.82
Xbox 360 250GB Console – Matte Black Finish  £179.99  418 £75,235.82
Fujitsu AH530 15.6″ Intel Pentium Win7 Laptop  £299.96  970 £290,961.2
Intempo Retro DAB/FM Radio with iPod/iPhone Dock in  £44.99  91 £4,229.06
Christmas Bumper Collection Book Pack – x6 Childrens Christmas Books  £8.99  44 £395.56
G-Star Raw Laundry Shooting Jacket  £39.99 143 £5,718.57
French Vintage Rustic Kitchen Set – Mug Mugs Chopping Board Magnets Shabby Chic  £9.99  48 £479.52
HIGH QUALITY EASY STORAGE BAMBOO CHOPPING BOARD WITH INTEGRATED PESTLE & MORTAR  £11.99  34 £407.66
HALO COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY XBOX 360 MICROSOFT VIDEO GAME NEW SEALED PAL  £25.85  225 £5,816.25

As you can see its been a real mixed bag, the chopping boards were a complete flop, along with a few others, however in transactional volume, the laptops came out on tops with close to £300,000 of sales in a day or so.

This is the general theme of eBay daily deals, they tend to either flop or do “OK”, however there are always a few exceptions and when they do go, they will go deep in either the value or number of transactions (like the laptop’s v’s the bra’s).

The Issues With Daily Deals (as a Merchant)

The transactional volume of sales is an issue, as the volume of orders that a daily deal has been proven to produce and with the deal sporting an uncertain outcome.

Take the bra’s for example, that’s over 3,000 pairs to get out, ideally in under a day and that kind of spike can wreak havoc in a business if they’re not prepared (and even if they are!).

Daily deals don’t happen overnight, they’re scheduled with plenty of time lag to prepare for them and of course there is a negotiation period between the merchant and eBay. Even still the companies that I’ve worked with that have had both daily and weekly deals, have in some cases still struggled with the volume of orders that such offers can produce.

Preparation is key, the obvious one is packing as many lines as products as possible before hand, the second not so obvious is having a tool that can cope with a potential large volume of orders and of course the custom service requirement, as you know full well, this is eBay and for every sale, you’re likely to get at least one question ;-)

How Can You Get an eBay Daily Deal?

So we’re finally at the pivotal question “How Can You Get an eBay Daily Deal?” and sadly the answer is not straightforward.

Looking from side of eBay you’re going to have to check a few boxes, these could be:

  • Proven sales history on eBay
    You’ve got a long history of selling on eBay and that you’re capable of dealing with the style of buyers found on eBay (demanding).
  • Ideally at Strategic or Enterprise account status
    eBay Outlets tend to fall into the “Enterprise” bracket of account management, however there is a layer below this level and you’d be surprised at the number of eBay businesses that are covered by these account management levels. Instead of one account manager to several hundred accounts, we’re talking one account manager to less than 10 accounts. Now that’s some focus ;-)
  • Be sat on or have access to a product or range of products that can be offered an unbelievable value
    Its not unheard of for multiple offers for daily or weekly deals to be rejected, this is actually the hardest step to get through as the eBay daily deals staff are exceptionally picky in what makes it through to the final deals that are shown on the site.
  • Have the ability to process a very large spike in sales volume logistically
    Having back-end software tools that can cope with “volume” are almost absolutely required. While some merchants have used SMP (Selling Manager Pro) successfully, dealing with such volumes with this kind of tool isn’t really going to stand up to the job. Instead, if I was sat in the place of the person(s) that are calling which eBay daily deals to let through and which ones to not, I’d probably choose a slightly more uncompetitive one where the merchant has software that can cope with huge volumes and staff & processes in place to deal with them, over another merchant that I’d have doubts in.

Also an interesting dynamic that you may have not considered is that eBay account managers are likely to have sales targets to hit, this is an entry point you may not have considered as with just a few or even just one daily deal “in the bag” for them, could easily allow them to reach those targets and thus provide a motivation point for you to explore.

Now before you even consider hitting the ‘contact Matt’ page and asking whom to approach, the response you’re likely to get back isn’t likely to be particularly constructive. Instead, think about what internal channels you can leverage, such as the eBay account manager route and also what external channels such as LinkedIn to locate the people you need to contact.

Summary

In this article, I’ve covered what eBay daily deals are, what kind of volumes in both sales and item counts you can expect and perspectives you’ve probably not considered and this article should at least make you think of a couple of action points:

  • How can your business deal with +3000 in a single day
  • How can your business create a deal that is of exceptional value to eBay customers
  • How can you make your business & offers attractive to eBay

Now with that said, you should ignore daily deals, the deals you want to go for are eBay’s Weekly Deals and I explain these in one of my next articles.

Data is the Life Blood of an eCommerce Business

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Introduction

Firstly let’s quickly identify whom this article aimed at and why on earth you should even consider reading the rest of this article.

I’ve personally spent over four years at 3rd party software providers working with businesses that have got themselves into operational & data issues that could have been avoided when it comes to marketplaces such as eBay & Amazon.

Some businesses have had no tool prior to moving into them and some have done but have made fatal mistakes along the way. Such mistakes have cost them untold amounts of wasted resources. This article is is aimed at helping you identify such issues as early on in the process as possible and to help you understand that data is the lifeblood of an eCommerce business.

New Businesses / Proof of Concept
This article is aimed at a brand new business that has just started exploiting the marketplaces for the first time, after all you need to have proof that the channels work and you need to start from somewhere.

Manual processes at this stage are a “good thing”, there is so much to be learned and as such the ‘manual’ entry experience is absolutely required, so that the people in the business understand the requirement for a tool as soon as possible and that they’re able to scale their operation.

Take the points on board now regarding data and look to the future of your business.

Businesses that have proven the marketplaces work for them.
This article is also aimed at businesses that have already proved that the marketplace channels are viable for them and are paying attention to them each day to manually load on products to the channels and most importantly processing orders from them too.

There is one exception to this, this is a business that has carried out substantial intelligence on the marketplaces and needs to leapfrog the basics and move straight to a large scale model as quickly as possible. If this is the case for your business, then you need to know how valuable data is and why you should retain it when it comes to the popular marketplaces.

As Your Business Grows

As the business grows bigger and bigger, normally by working (harder) on achieving one or all of these factors:

  • More inventory
  • Better priced inventory
  • More staff within the team
  • Adding more sales channels
  • Higher quality descriptions
  • Better order management
  • Lower operational costs
  • More profit
  • etc…

The cracks within the starting phase start to show very quickly, some identify this early on, some never identify it at all. Some unknowingly start to tackle this issue, but don’t actually realise why.

These could be through micro-management of staff & processes, after all most small businesses are rarely started & run by highly experienced managers, but by normal people and haven’t had the training or experience in dealing with such issues and I know personally that when I ran my own business, this is a trap that I got myself stuck in (and one that I’ve done my darn hardest to help others realise).

Putting internal management part aside and the other points above, what a small business owner(s) rarely tend to recognise is that “data” is one of core the reasons why they’re able to operate a business at all.

Data in a Business is Like Blood in a Human

Without blood, we’re pretty much screwed. The same as data within a business. Data is the lifeblood of the business.

This also ports to non-eCommerce businesses too, however is amplified by the very nature of the “e” part in eCommerce.

This article is entirely aimed at helping you understand that when you’re processing your orders in say eBay’s Selling Manager Pro, loading inventory to Amazon via spreadsheets or Seller Desktop, you are dealing with data. Your businesses data.

So when you’re ticking the boxes to print the orders out in SMP, using the sell your item form on eBay or adding items manually into Amazon using the add a product link. You are working with data, data that you should have absolute control over. It is after all the blood of the business.

Also the data that you are creating is exceptionally valuable to the business, the most obvious data is inventory data, however the not so obvious is the order data, that provides a unique history and insight to what the business has done.

So the moment you manually add inventory data into a marketplace like eBay or Amazon or process one or more orders in their web interfaces, you are potentially giving away the largest asset of the business to a process that you do not fully control or own and in the case of Amazon, you cannot get that data back out easily either.

An Example of Bad Data – Amazon

Let’s take Amazon as an example. It’s not unheard of for a business to have spent hundreds of hours loading thousand upon thousand of inventory records onto Amazon manually. And of course, this most likely had some huge positive effect to the business, namely orders & profit.

However what has been happening is that the business has been building Amazon a superb product database, that the business no longer has ready access to. You’re unable (either easily and certainly not officially) to export the product data that was originally created. While at the same time, Amazon are using that data to market not only your businesses data more effectively to more customers, but to other businesses too.

If you are manually creating products on Amazon using the web interface, stop immediately.

(More on this later in this article)

An Example of Bad Data – eBay

eBay UK LogoThe data requirements of eBay are huge. Lets taking the clothing categories for example. In recent updates the pressure to include attribute data as part of the listing process has become mandatory (along with many other categories too).

This compared to Amazon has positive effects, eBay are then able to leverage this data and then allow customers to drill down on their searches and ultimately makes a better buying experience and ultimately more sales for the business.

However, those attributes are now locked into eBay’s platform and getting them out again is painful and will cause a massive mop-up job of cleaning the junk out to make it “portable” later.

If you are manually creating products on eBay using the web interface, stop immediately.

(More on this later in this article)

Ironically in both examples it’s your data. Once it’s been entered into the said platforms, getting it out again in a format that is reusable is in some cases just not possible.

I’ve only ever worked with one company that elected to completely ditch all their product data to start again afresh. What they did make of it a second time around with a structured approach was truly amazing, but out of the hundreds of businesses I’ve worked with, this was the exception, rather than the rule.

What is more common is for businesses to try and do is to extract their product data and bring it into a 3rd party tool. In doing so (as I mentioned above) causes an absolute mess to try and sort out. The descriptions that come back from eBay are the full descriptions, so the data held within them is difficult to impossible to extract. Item specifics can be lost completely and any attribute data that formed variations can also be lost too.

In a recent conversation, it was mentioned that a business had tried using an import tool from a 3rd party software provider and the mess that was left over, not only went wrong multiple times, but was in such a state they were forced into abandoning it completely.

This is exactly the situation that you should avoid.

Step in the Saviours

It does not matter what software tool you use and this could of course be a combination of tools. The critical factor is that you have access to both the inventory data and sales data externally, outside of the marketplaces themselves.

To spell it out very clearly:

The moment you suspect the business is going to work long term, employ 3rd party software that is not created by the marketplaces as soon as possible or if it is, you can easily gain access to the original data.

Frankly I do not care what software it is and neither should you (to a point, that point normally being cost), as long as it allows you to enter the product data outside of the marketplaces and retain this data.

As far as sales orders go, having the ability to process them externally is normally a huge positive to the business, however in the case of Amazon, you are able export the sales data for current or later use, where as eBay, no real export and sales data can be lost after 45 days or so.

There are providers that can cost several thousand pounds over a year are not suited towards smaller businesses, however there are plenty of options out there and again the core criteria outside of cost, is:

  • Access to the raw product data
  • Access to sales data

Other requirements such as stock control, order management in the case of this article are either assumed or luxuries.

Free Examples

We all like free and here are two free options for both eBay & Amazon.

Amazon
If we take the Amazon marketplace as an example here, if you stop entering data manually and start using the import sheets they provide for the inventory data, because you’re storing this on one of the computers you have access to, after sending it to Amazon to create the product, keep the sheets, because you can use it at a later date, either to update the records that were in the file or to transfer the data to another marketplace/sales channel.

eBay
If you’re looking for a free option for eBay, then for product data eBay’s File Exchange this covers both product creation, updates and also order data too. However can be clunky and in massive accounts, can take several hours to process requests (I tried this on an account with over 10,000 live listings, it took 5 hours even for a basic export, on a smaller scale it would be adequate though).

Other Providers
There are a multitude of providers that can offer superior options outside of this, they are not all SaaS models (where you pay them a commission on sales) and if your requirements are low, then community extensions to popular website open-source products can be free or very inexpensive (covering these is not a concern for this article, just that they exist).

Ultimate Goal For Your Data

However the ultimate goal in regards to your sales and inventory data is that you have access to them and you can then re-use the data. I call this “portable data”, data that you can use as you need to, where ever that may be.

Sticking with the example approach of this article:

Lets say you start a business on eBay or Amazon, you see the signs that its going to go well and do put some form of software in place to maintain control and ownership of your data, you can then grow and grow as the business dictates. You can move software providers relatively easily and if you want to add in new sales channels, such as a website or another marketplace, with a few tweaks to the data you already have access to, you can do. The other option of not doing this, is frankly nasty.

Summary

Data either product or sales related is the life blood of an eCommerce business.

It needs to be “clean“, it needs to be “yours” and it needs to be “portable“.

If you keep bashing data into marketplaces and don’t retain a copy, then you’re basically capping the potential of you and your business. And that’s something neither of us desire.

Website Data Extraction/Scraping & Form Filling Expert

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Due to demand, this service is only available to existing clients and is no longer available.

Website Data ScrapingWeb scraping can be hugely advantageous to businesses, allowing them to function more effectively and keep up-to-date with information that is on specific websites more frequently and accurately.

This is especially true when you consider the applications that can be created can be run by numerous members of staff on an ad-hoc basis or even automated everyday at certain times or that they allow the access to complex data from suppliers for more effective merchandising or keeping their internal systems updated more frequently with stock and pricing information.

This can be also a very quick process too, taking only a few hours to complete most projects and then only taking just seconds for small projects to run and depending on the complexity & speed of the users connection to the internet.

I have several years experience with web scraping over many projects and requirements. In this article I cover the details of extraction in more depth and include examples where suitable. If you have a project in-mind, contact me today with your requirements.

I specialise on small & medium scale scraping projects, such as extracting data from supplier websites for product information, stock & prices updates.

However I can readily tackle multi-tiered extractions and also create clean data from complex situations to import into 3rd party applications with little to no input from the user.

Not only can most data be extracted from most websites, the data can also be posted to websites from data files such as CSV.  This could be form filling for job applications, listing products on to websites or online dating requests, not just extracting product, service or article data from a website.

If you can do it in a web browser, then it can most likely it can be automated.

The possibilities are almost endless.

If have a project in mind, Contact Matthew today, it could be completed in just a few hours.

 

Getting The Edge With Data Extraction

Using automated tools to grab or post data to the web could trim hours off each day or week. Extracting the latest stock & prices from suppliers could mean higher profitability and less back-orders. It could even mean reams of data from suppliers websites and give your business the edge over your competitors.

It doesn’t matter if its behind password protected content, if you can “see it” in your web browser, chances are it can be extracted. If you’re entering data manually into website forms, chances are high that it can be automated too.

I’ve worked on numerous projects where clients have been able to ensure that they’re back-office tools are up to date as possible with the latest information from suppliers and even allowed businesses to work with suppliers they’ve never been able to do with before, because the requirements to extract data from supplier websites has been too restrictive either due to time or cost.

Knowing what your competitors prices are can be a huge advantage when it comes to pricing especially in the eCommerce environment we have today. If you’ve got the data and they can be matched to other sites, within one click and a few minutes, the latest pricing information from competitors could be yours. As many times as you want, whenever you want.

Scraping & data extraction can solve this in a cost effective manner. One script, used over and over. Anytime you want by however members of staff you have.

If you want the edge, Contact Matthew today.

 

The Required Tools Are Free

Using two free applications, the first is the Firefox web browser and a free add-on called iMacros, simple to very complex web automation can be completed.

This allows completed projects to be run by the owner using free-to-use tools, so that any extraction or processing can be run by the owner or staff members as many times as they require and however often they require.

Also extract processing can be obtained using JavaScript to process complex data inputs or extracted data from websites. I cover this in more detail in the “extra data processing” section.

Don’t worry if you’ve never used either of these before, if you’ve used a web browser and can press a button, its that simple. I’ll help you get started and its very easy to do. I also include instructional video’s to get you set up. It’ll take no more than 10 minutes.

Simple Extraction

In this scenario, data elements from a single page can be extracted and then saved to a CSV file.

Example:

This could be a product detail page of a TV and the required elements, such as:

  • Product title
  • Price(s)
  • Stock number
  • Model number
  • Images
  • Product specifics
  • Descriptions
  • Reviews

Are all extracted and then are then saved to a CSV file for your own use.

The time it takes to make a simple extraction of data from a single page varies greatly, this is because the data on the page can sometimes be very poorly formatted or if there are lots of fields that need to be extracted this can take quite some time.

If have a project in mind, Contact Matthew today, it could be completed in just a few hours.

Extra Data Processing

Extra processing can be applied to the extracted data before saving to a CSV file. This is very handy when you only want or require cleaned data to be saved. Most of the time its obvious that cleaning is needed and basic cleaning of the data is included in the macro.

The quickest way of identifying any processing you require on extracted data is to provide an example file of how you would like the final data to look like.

Example:

If one of the extracted fields was a complex data field such as and email address held with other data in JavaScript, such as this:

<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript”>var contactInfoFirstName = “Vivian”; var contactInfoLastName = “Smith”; var contactInfoCompanyName = ” REALTY LLC”; var contactInfoEmail = “[email protected]”; </script>

Instead of including the extra information in the export, the email address can be identified and only that data field is extracted. Or if all the data held in the JavaScript is required, this could be split into separate columns, such as:

First Name,         Last Name,        Company Name,              Email Address
Vivan,                   Smith,                   REALTY LLC,                        [email protected]

Also, if the data needs to be formatted for import into a 3rd party application, such as ChannelAdvisor, eSellerPro, Linnworks or a website application, this isn’t a problem either. I’m exceptionally competent with Microsoft Excel & VBA and can help you leverage the gained data and format it in a complete solution that requires the least amount of input from you or your staff.

Even if you have basic requirements or highly complex Contact Matthew today, your data extraction project could be completed in just a few hours and fully customised to your business requirements.

Paginated Extraction

This can vary from site to site, however complex extraction could involve navigating several product pages on a website such as search results, then navigating to each product that is in the search result and then processing a simple extraction or a complex extraction on the products detail page.

Example (property)  – Website: Homepath.com

In this example, not only is the requirement is to extract the data found for a specific property; it is also required for ALL the search results to be extracted.

This would involve extracting all the results and then navigating to each property page and extracting the data on the property detail pages.

The time taken to extract the data from such pages varies on both the number of property results to go through and the amount of data that is to be extracted from the property details page.

Example (products) – Website: Microdirect.co.uk

In this example similar to the properties, the requirement is to extract the data from each of the product pages, but to also to extract the product details pages data for all the pages in the search results.

The macro would navigate through each of the page results (say 10), identify each of the products, then one-by-one work its way through the products, saving the data to a file.

Need data from pages & pages of a website? Not a problem, Contact Matthew today, it could be completed in just a few hours.

Ultra Complex Extraction

These normally consist of a requirement of data to be processed from a CSV file, then external processing & scraping by the macro and then possibly depending upon the results, further processing or scraping is to be completed. Such projects are normally very complex and can take some time to complete.

Working with multiple tiered drop down boxes (options) fall into this category, as normally by their very nature can be complex to deal with. It’s also worth noting that is possible to work with multiple tiers of options, for example, when making one section, the results cause sub-options to appear. Sites that need image recognition technologies also fall into this category.

However it’s easier to explain an example rather go minute detail.

Example

For this example, you have a CSV file that has a number of terms that need to be searched for on a dating website, once these searches are made, the details are saved and then it is required to contact/email of the persons through another form.

The macro will make intelligent searches for these terms and the matching results (these are likely to be paginated) are saved to a separate file. Then for each result that was saved, the macro will then are then sent customised contact messages through another form found on the same or different website.

Do you feel your requirements are complicated or the website you’d like to extract from or post to isn’t simple? Contact Matthew today, I’ll be able to let you know exact times & can create the project for you at a fixed cost.

Saving Data & File Types

Extracted data is normally saved as CSV files. The data is separated by commas “,” and will open in Microsoft Excel or Open Office easily. For most applications using a comma will work perfectly.

However sometimes, the data that is extracted is complex (such as raw HTML) and using a comma as the separator causes issues with leakage when viewing in Microsoft Excel or Open Office, this is when using other characters such as the pipe “|” comes in very handy to separate the data fields (eg title and image).

The separator can be any single combination of characters you wish, some common examples are:

  • Comma “,”
  • Tab ”      “
  • Pipe “|”
  • Double pipe “||”
  • Semi-colon “;”
  • Double semi-colon “;;”

It will be quite clear from the onset which separator is required either from the data is being extracted or the projects requirements. If you have any special requirements, please discuss this beforehand.

XML or SQL insert statements can also be created if desired, however this can add several hours onto projects due to its complexities.

File types an issue? I can pre-process data files before-hand in other applications id needed.  Contact Matthew today, it could be completed in just a few hours.

Speed of Extraction/Form Filling

As a general rule, the projects I create run exceptionally fast, however there are two factors that will limit the speed of them:

  • The speed of the website being interacted with
  • The speed of your connection to the internet

You can also make project scripts run much faster by ensuring that the following options in your iMacro’s settings are turned exactly the same as those shown below.

You can find the options page shown below by clicking the “Edit” tab on the iMacro’s side bar, then pressing the button called “Options”.

Imacros Option Panel

Even if you above looks complicated, its not. Instructional video’s are included and I’ll make it exceptionally easy for you. Contact Matthew today, it could be completed in just a few hours.

Exceptions & “Un-Scrape-able” Pages

It is important that your processing requirements are discussed before hand with examples, so that I can confirm whether or not automated scraping will suit your requirements. In most cases it will do, but sometimes it’s just not possible.

In some cases, it is not possible to extract data from pages over & over due to:

  • A poor ‘make up’ of the page
  • Inconsistent page layouts
  • Page structures that vary enormously from one page to another
  • Use of flash or excessive use of AJAX
  • User code ‘capture’ boxes (like recapture)

When this happens, then the only consistent method of extracting data from such pages is by a human and scraping will unlikely be suitable for your requirements. This is rare, but does occur. If I identify this (and I will very quickly), I’ll let you know ASAP.

I am unwilling to work with data of questionable content. The below above are just common-sense really, I’ve added them for completeness.

  • Adult orientated material (porn is a no, services are a no, ‘products’ are ok)
  • Sites that are focused towards children
  • Identifiable records on people such as medical records (order related data is fine if they are yours).
  • Most government sites
  • In situations where I suspect the data will be grossly miss-used for fraudulent or illegal purposes.

Unsure on what your requirements are or just not sure if web scraping is the right way forwards for your business requirements. Contact Matthew now, I’ll be able to help you and turn it into plain English for you.

What Are the Limits of Extraction/Processing?

Most normal limitations are caused by very large or very deep page requirements of a project. That doesn’t mean they’re not possible, just that it could take some time to code for and also for to run each time by you.

The projects that I create suit smaller scale situations, such as one off extractions or extractions that need to be run by the owner over and over, such as on a daily basis to collect the latest product & pricing information from a supplier.

The real limitations come in to force when the requirements are for huge scale extraction, such as hundreds of thousands of records or exceptionally complex and exceptionally deep extractions. This is when using tools such as Pyhon , C++, Perl or other languages that allow spidering of websites would be more suitable.

This is not a speciality of mine, however due to my experience with scraping, I can assist you with project management of such projects with 3rd party contractors. Contact Matthew now if this is what you need.

Anonymity & Use of Proxies

If you need to keep the activities of such scripting hidden to remain anonymous, then this can be achieved on small scale projects using free proxies with no interaction from yourself.

In larger or more repetitive situations then either I can help you setup your browser to use free to use proxies (can be unreliable at times) or in most cases I’ve found leveraging inexpensive a services that are very easy to use and most importantly reliable.

If this is a concern for you, don’t worry I’ve done it all before. Contact Matthew now if this is a requirement for your project.

Do you provide ‘open’ code?

For ‘small’ or ‘simple’ macros, yes the code is open and you or your development team are able to edit as required.

However for some complex or ultra complex macro’s the code is obfuscated due to the extra functions that are normally included. This is non-negotiable as I have developed custom functions that allow me to uniquely deal with complex situations of data extraction & posting.

Is Web Scraping Legal?

The answer to this can be both yes and no depending upon the circumstances.

Legal Data Extraction
For example if you own the site and data that is being extracted, then you own the data and you’re using it for your own purposes. If you gain permission beforehand, for example from a supplier to extract data from their website, this is also legal.

I have worked on projects where an employee has left a company and there is no access to the back-ends/administration consoles of websites and the only way of obtaining the data held on the site is by scraping. I’ve done BuddyPress, WordPress, PHP-Nuke, phpBB, e107 & vBulletin sites previously to name just a few.

Also I have completed many projects where product data is extracted for use by a business to obtain up-to-date pricing and stock information from suppliers websites, along with extra product & categorisation data too.

Illegal Data Extraction
Because the macro’s are run on your or staff computers, scenarios outside of where the sites are owned or permission has been granted, fall into your discretion.

I cannot be held responsible for any legal actions that may proceed from your actions of running such scripts on 3rd party websites. As such I strongly recommended that you contact the 3rd party to seek consent and check any privacy or usage policies that they may have prior to extraction.

Contact Matthew

If you’ve got a clear idea on what you’d like done or just even if you’re just not sure if its even possible, Contact Matthew today and I’ll be able to tell you if it is possible, how long, how much and when the completed project will be with you.

What Does Online Gaming Have To Do With Marketplaces like eBay & Amazon?

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In this article I pose the following question with an aim to draw a comparison between features found in gaming, to that found on marketplaces like eBay & Amazon.

What Does Online Gaming Have To Do With Marketplaces like eBay & Amazon?

Before I can attempt to draw a comparison, I need to identify some of the core components of online gaming. Being a self-confessed hardcore gamer, I feel I’m at least semi-qualified to attempt to document some of the qualities that online games have to offer, as for the marketplaces comparison I also feel I’m semi-qualified there too.

 

Understanding Online Gaming

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

My history of gaming goes back to the original days of WON, which was the system that Valve used for multi-player games using the Halflife 1 (HL1) engine before it was migrated to Steam. This now includes games such as CounterStrike & TeamFortress Classic & the variations that spun from these, like FortressForever.

My online gaming has taken a specific slant, multi-player. I’ve never really been a fan of single player games, HalfLife 1 & 2 are prime examples, I’ve not played more than a few minutes with these two, but I must be into the realms of years now of the hours put in for the multi-player versions. Also it’s worth pointing out that I took several days off on the release of TeamFortress 2, so that I could sit down and enjoy the newly released game.

To give an indication of the extent of my lust for multi-player, I’ve dabbled with MMOG’s (Massive Multiplayer Online Games), however because I know my personal weakness for them, I’ve steered away from the likes of Guild wars & World of Warcraft, because I know I’ll have no life after them. I’ve recently been hooked on World of Tanks (WoT) and my gaming community lost me for over 8 months to a web based MMOG called Tribal Wars.

It’s also a good time to indicate that I am not a fan of football, this may explain in part my obsession with online gaming, as I miss the key elements I detail later in this article from bot being a “fan” that can readily port to the game of football as well, not just selling marketplaces like eBay & Amazon.

Tribal Wars is an interesting game to consider, as its not the normal type of game that you would consider as online gaming, as its all based in the browser & is highly focused towards strategy. Starting with a single village, you go plundering other villages to get more resources, the aim is to increase your buildings & troops to a level, where you can educate a nobleman, then go off and over 4-5 attempts, win over another village. This is all done in a web browser, while fending attacks from other villages, attacking other players,  joining tribes and plotting the demise of other tribes in the world that you’re playing.

Tribal Wars ignoring the core requirements that make an experience (XP) MMOG based game, also sunk into another passion of mine, coding & mathematics. Now this is where I seal my fate for that game as I’m now willing to admit that I wrote a masterpiece of over 52,000 lines of code to automate that game and this was the reason why I ended up dominating an entire continent (or K as they’re known). Naughty I know…

Flipping back to some current games, these being TeamFortress 2, CounterStrike Source and World of Tanks. While these games being in a different format (employing role play, first-person shooter, real-time strategy etc…) where you play an humanoid or tank object, rather than being focused on an image in a browser, the cross-comparisons are exceptionally similar.

Core Elements of an Online Game (for me)

Each of these games employ the following features:

  1. Ease of play, even for new players (called n00bs)
  2. Social interaction
  3. A scoring mechanism
  4. Team play, with real people (see note on AI later)
  5. An experience mechanism & Achievements
  6. A token mechanism (this is another form of Economics)
  7. A single or set of characters that you can improve over time
  8. Ability to be totally random
  9. Respawn events or never-ending

It’s critically important that new players are able to join and understand the game quickly, then to build a lust for gaining experience & achieve some or all of the other core attributes. Some games do this by having tiered levels of games, taking WoT (World of Tanks) for example, there are 10 tiers and players only play with other players in tiers up toa  maximum of 4 above them, to keep the game enjoyable for them.

Social interaction is huge for online games, it’s been known for people to get married in games! A really nice story to add here is that out of the gaming community I created a few years back, we now have our first real life baby that would not have entered this world without it. Now that’s the power of social interaction, forget the rest of the normal stuff, chatting, plotting, team work etc… Social can go to real world too and we’ve had some amazing nights out with the lads when we’ve all met up from all around Europe to a single place and take the virtual to the real-world (Big Chief looked pregnant, but he was a bloke).

Team play and the interaction of other real players is absolutely key, they’re needed to keep the game random and also to allow team work. Now this teamwork may be in dual units or as entire tribes of hundreds of people, but its this co-operation that can truly make a simple game, hugely addictive.

Now this is a good time to cover artificial intelligence (AI) and I’ll be back to the core elements shortly.

Artificial Intelligence In Games

You may also be wondering why I have spent a couple of hundred words with this topic, when you get to the marketplaces comparison later, AI has its direct comparison to “automation” and it’s critical you understand AI and how it’s linked to together.

Now this is where I’m going to slate one of my favourite game providers, Valve. Although to be fair they had a brilliant stab at it & I just prefer playing with real people.

Left 4 Dead Characters In two recent releases, Left for Dead and Left for Dead 2, this game is based upon a AI engine that works out the skills of the players and adapts the game to suit. The problem is, the more you play, it doesn’t take much to work out the trigger events and when you’re likely to find a witch (she’s lost a child& sits there crying and goes ape if you have your flash light on, then proceeds to attempt to kill either you or one of your 3 team mates) or a rank (a whopping great big zombie that can rip the floor up & lob it at you, you gotta burn that one with a petrol bomb and it takes some kill I can assure you).

The original incarnation was just a team of 4 players, this was an immediate fail for me, as I need at least 10 people each side to consider it worth my while, any less, the game dynamics start to suck. In later updates a “verses” game appeared, so instead of just 4 players, 8 could play and the first team, the survivors take on the opposite team, who play one of 5 roles as zombie-fied creatures. With random hoardes of zombies appearing, or not so random as you figure out as you play more and more. Yes, there was an hack to allow more players, but the amount of server load caused by the AI engine, made it unplayable.

So, for me AI sucks. I’d rather play with humans, you can never tell what they’ll do next and no game is exactly like the one before, ever.

Economics & the Other Factors

Economics are a curious addition to online gaming, not only can this provide an amazing gaming experience, but it can also allow game creators to find extra sources of revenue or even make it their sole revenue stream.

World of Tanks - American TreeTo focus on the gamers side of this equation, lets take WoT’s, in this game you start with a level 1 tank and you gain experience (XP) with each battle you fight, you get more if your team wins and less if your team fails. You also gain credits for each battle and they follow the same path as the XP, if you win, you get more coins. Its the combination of the XP to unlock higher tier tanks and you need coins (lots of) to buy the tanks. So the more you play, the more XP & coins you get.

Now while this game does not have sharing abilities that I’ll cover in a moment, this game does have the ability to buy gold coins that can be used for several purposes, such as having a premium account that allows you gain 50% more XP & coins each battle, or they can be traded to buy special tanks or ironically even to convert XP or buy normal coins.

world-of-tanks-gold-1As you can tell this can could get expensive, I did a few quick sums and with a small group of us, we’ve easily ploughed £1500-2000 in this game alone in the past few months.

Now flipping this to the game makers, this is where freemium kicks in and the best example is the TeamFortress 2 game I referenced earlier. In this game you play one of 8/9 characters in teams of up to 16 per side and battle it out in one several game formats capture the flag/point, attack defend or death match.

Bots (AI/fake players) were added, these were a feature in the original game Team Fortress Classic (by their modding community, as the game has an API), however again they’re actions are relatively poor compared to humans (although the way-pointing has come on quite a way since the original), however as per my earlier note on AI, these generally suck and the general community of players tend to keep away from BOT servers.

This is where it becomes interesting because this game originally started as a typical game, buy it and play as much as you like, however Valve at the time had started to implement a drop mechanism for extras in the games, such as weapons or items you can wear. These items could be stored and new items could be built, but in a stroke of genius, they allowed the items to be traded and then that’s where the whole game changed. TF2 turned into a free game and the revenue stream is now made from the massive user base sporting customised items, that new players want and can buy from the in game store.

Modding Engine (API)

In the case of Valve games, they have for a number of years now allowed 3rd parties to leverage the gaming engine, either to create new games or to change the way the current games are played.

This has been done via a link to the game engine on the server and communities like SourceMod that sports over 450 plugins that can completely change the way the games work and have allowed longevity to the gaming engine, because of the hundreds, if not thousands of addon’s & extensions that have been created by 3rd parties to the original games.

Achievements

In all the games I’ve covered above, they all sport the feature of experience & ability to improve from what they originally started from, this can be with time input or via paid for addons. Another important factor I have not covered up until now is the ability to “respawn”, this is where the player at the end of a round or game, starts again at the beginning, to play another challenge against the players.

In TF2, its normally a round based game, this could be to capture a flag or point(s), counter strike source is similar where a bomb needs to be planted or hostages need to be saved (or inversely,  a bomb site or the hostages need to be defended) and for WoT all the enemy tanks are destroyed or the cap point is taken.

In almost all the games I’ve mentioned there is the ability to be awarded achievements from the actions taken in the games. For WoT this may be sniper or a medal, for TF2, this could be the number of kills scored with a weapon or other combinations, some are obscenely hard to get, in fact one of the spy achievements due to a bug that was introduced a year ago, cannot be completed.

The most competitive of players will aim to unlock ALL the achievements for one or more player classes, the same as one of the players that I play with on WoT, he’s unlocked every tank & upgrade for an entire country tree.

This has literally taken him months and by his own admission that country tree (USA) & the tanks contained with in it, are crap compared to Germany, to the point that the highest tier tank in that tree is being removed and replaced with another, because its so under powered.

But he knew this & still continued, the game play itself was only one part of the game, unlocking the boxes on the screen was more important to him, than how the tanks actually played and invested months obtaining this level. That I hope demonstrates the power of achievements.

How Does Online Gaming Dynamics Relate to Marketplaces?

I’ve pretty much covered the basics of online gaming in ~1900 words, however how does this relate to marketplaces like eBay & Amazon?

 ebay-feedback-profile-1

Well the most obvious is feedback, when you first start selling on either Amazon or eBay (the game), you start from 0 and work upwards. The feedback system is incremental and ports directly to the experience (XP) model found in games, the more you sell (the game) the more feedback you’re likely to obtain.

Now this is where the game gets interesting, as Feedback is not entirely incremental, it can decrement too. So if you have a dissatisfied customer, they can leave you a neutral or negative feedback, this can be directly compared to the World of Tanks game, because even though you lost a battle, you still got something from it, albeit a negative and because you want more XP & coins (think feedback score & profit) then you do your best [as a business] to ensure that the feedback is positive.

Marketplace Achievements

When we mix in other dynamics of the marketplaces, lets take the eBay PowerSeller status, that has multiple tiers, Bronze, Silver/Gold, Platinum & Titanium and now the ultimate of being a “eBay Top Rated Seller” (eTRS). So that when you reach this level, you are allowed to leverage discounts on your eBay fees and gain extra exposure. This is very similar to the premium model found in MMOG’s and has distinct correlations to the items found in TF2, an item is worn, the same as the eTRS badge is worn.

Now chuck in the eBay “Detailed Seller Ratings” (DSR’s) where sellers (the gamer) can be scored on more than just feedback that had just three levels, buyers can rate sellers on a scale of 1 to 5 for their experience, this absolutely wreaks gaming levels, especially when you consider the business (or gamer) can electively choose to lower its risk to specific DSR ratings by tacking tactical/strategic decisions on the way they list (play the game) on eBay.

Flipping over to Amazon, Amazon is a slightly different game (or business), Amazon is a longer term game where you don’t gain access to the converted buy box for at least 3 months and in most cases is 4-5 months, after proving that you are a worthy gamer, I mean business, as you can see the line is now becoming blurred between business & gamer.

Amazon also leverage the feedback game, with ratings from 1 to 5 and with eBay too, you can play the feedback game by leaving follow up comments or attesting feedback that has been left by buyers. In a gaming scernio this is similar to appealing to the server admin or game providers for a cheat or foul play (think those scummy buyers that try it on) or appealing directly to your eBay or Amazon account manager.

The reviews & guides that is found on eBay is also an interesting gaming feature. As a business you’re able to write reviews for other gamers, sorry I mean eBay members to rate on how well the review is written / its usefulness. You can also sport an extra logo next to your eBay ID (player name) if the sum of your reviews meet specific requirement levels (think XP).

Administration

You can also make complaints about cheaters to the powers that be, this maybe someone stealing your images or breaking one of the marketplace policies or this could be a player with suspect game play.

This can also take an automated approach by either the markeplaces or the game providers, for example listing items that are under the VeRO protection on eBay or by a cheat being picked up by the anti-cheat VAC system that is used by Valve.

What Does AI & Marketplace Automation Have In Common?

I spent a good few hundred words explaining the AI (Artificial Intelligence)  system found in games and I did air a dislike for AI in gaming, this can be directly compared to automation of business processes for the marketplaces. Somewhat ironic that I’ve spent years working on tools to automate marketplaces, however just like AI it has its place, the same goes for automation.

In a recent article I released titled “The Top 8 Pitfalls of Using 3rd Party Software To Manage Your Business” I cover the common issues found when using such tools as eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor, Linnworks, ChannelGrabber and so on, these are all caused by being removed from the games or businesses processes at ground level. The ultimate failure here is when the 3rd party provider goes down, this is the same as the AI engine failing and no-one can play the game, the business almost stops without it.

Don’t get me wrong, AI has its place, the same as automation tools, but if you rely too heavily on them and don’t report on them effectively, then the game or business is pretty much over.

API Access & Longevity

Another striking comparison between HalfLife engine games & the online marketplaces is the API access abilities. Having access to the core engine of the game/marketplace allows 3rd parties to expand on it further.

This could be as simple as feedback automation or it could go exceptionally deep as examples such as eSellerPro & ChannelAdvisor demonstrate exceptionally well.

The eBay API has to be one of the most comprehensive API’s out there and comes in numerous forms. Amazon Web Services rely heavily on API’s also and this has spawned numerous connected businesses, you only need to look at the eBay solutions directory to see the full scale of what can be achieved and its no wonder eBay Inc went for a new platform called X.Commerce, they know full well, without the integrations that millions of 3rd parties can provide will extend their core marketplace & associated companies offerings.

In all cases, because of API access, this has allowed 3rd parties to take extensions to the original platforms into areas that were not even conceived by the original creators, increasing customisation & longevity of the platforms.

Summary

All marketplaces whether knowingly or unwittingly employ several key features found in on-line gaming to keep businesses & users entertained with the marketplaces.

eBay probably have most of the bases covered, all though the XP model could be leveraged more, the feedback stars are nice, but multi tiered achievements could also prove lethal for competitiveness. A wild idea would be to have achievements for selling X value in one day, week or year, dominating sales for a category, badges based upon time, the options are endless.

Amazon have a few areas covered, but could leverage so much more from the core elements of online gaming to their advantage. In both cases, the marketplaces can be quick to leverage and as more experience is gamed (or did I mean gained?) and more automation is put into place, more coins, achievements or profit can be leveraged from them.

Yes, eBay & Amazon are different marketplaces or games, however the most starkest comparison that can ever be made between gaming & marketplaces is this:

Whether its a game or a business, if you take away focus, that is either working on despatching your orders (amongst other key business tasks) or playing the game, the game is going to cease to be played.

Did you enjoy this article? Did I miss out an element or a factor that you feel is important or have you spotted something I’ve completely over looked? Post your comments in the box below

5 Tips for Preparing Your Business for January Not Christmas

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It’s now late November and we’ve seen a good couple of press releases from supporting companies on how to increase and keep your Christmas period sane. However, it’s all too late as preparations for Christmas really should have been in place at or before August.

If you’ve not trained seasonal staff, arranged stock transfers, deliveries, put automation software in place, heck everything that gets amplified due to typical higher sales volume, then the next 3 weeks are going to be “fun time” for the business.

 

I Forgot January Once & Only Once!

However… below I’m sharing a short story on why you should not forget January and learn from a mistake I made a couple of years back.

After having a pretty hectic Christmas period, I had decided that on the 1st of January I was going to have a week or two off. Oh boy did we need it. We had been flat out for the past few months preparing for Christmas sales and had thought we had done everything right, sales were good and were very much looking forwards to the break and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

On our return, we started talking to our suppliers and that’s where it hit home, it turned out that our two main competitors had been busy & done their homework. They had an amazing 3 weeks after Christmas. They had been negotiating special deals and jumping on the clearance lines that were abundant. They’re January had rocked to the point that they had cleared more stock in those 3 weeks after Christmas, than in the entire month of December.

I cannot tell you how sick I felt, I had missed one of the oldest tricks in the book.

No Slacking in January!

January has the potential to bigger for sales volumes that December, the reason is simple people are in “sales mode”. What happens just after Christmas or even just before, 99.9% of all high-street retailers go into sales mode. People queue & even camp out on shop doorsteps to grab bargains and ironically this is really straight forwards for you to hijack.

So instead of making the mistake I made, here are five tips for preparing for the first few weeks of January or before:

Tip #1 – Delay Moving Software Providers

Shelve any idea that moving software providers, that can wait until the middle or later in January, if they got you through Christmas, then a few weeks delay won’t make much difference. If it’s not completely broken, don’t fix it (yet).

Tip #2 – Speak to Your Suppliers in Advance

Ask them explicitly what is going on sale after Christmas, suggest that you’ll be able to take larger volumes or stock that didn’t do well at a discounted rate. Spell it out on them, you have extra buying power after Christmas and you can help your sales rep hit his bonus for January.

Tip #3 – Prepare Several Lines to go into “Sale Mode” Now

By using tip #2, you will have an idea on what product you may have at better rates for a sale, as such prepare any data around these in advance, it’ll only take a few minutes per SKU as you can easily create duplicates or variations of the SKU in advance, with new details and perhaps use a different listing template to go with them.

Also a slightly different method would be to consider products that you would feel comfortable sitting on for 9 months, that you know will do next year and scoop extra discounts now and take a punt on higher returns next year?

Tip #4 – Do the Artwork Now

Designers are typically not very busy at this time of the year and it could be a good time to grab a saving on a mild branding redesign for a sale period. Such as adding sale logo’s to an existing template and preparing the design aspect in advance, so that its a click & go event, rather than a rush job when it’s too late.

You might also want to look at the two articles I wrote earlier this year on How to Make Your Own eBay Daily Deals & Weekly Deals and another on How To: Using eBay Shop Keywords to Leverage the Extra eBay Shop Pages, as you can prepare these in advance and hide the pages in the shop, then when it comes to sales time, swap them over in your eBay shop.

Tip #5 – Email Marketing

The same as the visual aspect, if you’ve worked and have obtained a couple of product ranges that will be worthy of a sale, then combine in the updated artwork to your email marketing campaigns and prepare the notifications in advance, so when the time comes, it’s a quick check over and off you go.

As an idea, if you have multiple products, you could make an event of it, explain which products you have going on sale and when (a delayed sale) and notify customers on say a daily or bi-daily basis of the latest sale item (you’ll need to be careful with this not to spam, just make your offering exceptionally compelling).

Summary

Don’t make the mistake I made, prepare for January, what products can you clear, what products can you buy to clear and how can you leverage the “sales mode” that most buyers go into at or before January?

If you do this now, before competitors have started having the conversations, then you can be first in and negotiate the best deals in advance, prepare a campaign and take January easy, knowing that you’ve worked extra hard now and actually have a plan for the month, rather than just “seeing what happens”.

The Four Standard Physical Product Business Models

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The following two video’s are part of the UnderstandingE project I have been working on & I’m sharing them here for any feedback you may have.

This hasn’t been clearly defined before (that I know of) and will be an immense help if you are considering an eCommerce product business for eBay, Amazon, transactional websites, the other channels etc… Or as I’ve found, to help realise that you’re actually using one or more of these and why you’re actually using more than one of them.

Four Standard Product Business Models

There are four standard product models that a business can use when it comes to physical based products which are intended for resale, this applies to almost all incarnations of an eCommerce product based business.

These are:

  1. Stocked
    This is like a retail shop, where the items are pre-purchased, then used as the inventory to drive data for the online channels and to fulfil orders. I cover the advantages in the video, however this has one major disadvantage, the outlay of cash to fund it.
  2. Manufacture
    This doesn’t have to be as hardcore as making glass, where you take sand (silica) and add other additives such as lime (calcium oxide) and then adding immense heat & other processes, it can be the combination of two or more products to make a unique third product. In the second video I use the example of the lighting in my office, taking stands, plugins, blurbs & softboxes and combining them into a kit, which is a unique product offering.
  3. Virtual / Just-in-Time
    I personally hate the phrase “drop shipping”, a more apt description would be “virtual” or “just in time”.
    This is typically where stock is made available virtually and then put on offer by the business, when an order is taken, the stock items are ordered and then fulfilled. This may be directed to the customer, but also to the business for sorting and then sending out (as I learned two days ago, the correct term for the latter part is called “Cross Match”).
  4. Asset Recovery
    We can also include refurbished products under this model, as essentially they have gone through the asset recovery process and been re-manufactured. This model can enable the highest returns, but also some major downsides, such as availability and quality.

In their Purest Form

In the video below I cover each of them in the purest forms, you’ll need to watch this one before moving to the second as without the explanation of them in this form, the hybrid models won’t make sense.

Hybrid Business Models

However, in reality, there are very few business that use only one of these, instead in this video, I explain how and why you would want to use a hybrid of these standard models for your business.

I also cover a model that I have not included in the four standard models called “Flipping”, as I explain in the video, this is not a scalable model and if you do find a product base that you can scale with, then I would suspect that it falls under the asset recovery hat.

Summary

Documenting these have been exceptionally useful for me & I’m sure for you also.

I’ve found when talking with business owners about these, this has helped them realise why they’re doing what they are with their businesses. It also makes it a pick & mix exercise, however you can now see why you would want some elements of each, but to limit as much as the negatives as you can by combining them together.

Stop - Take Action!Which models are you using?

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Foretelling The Future of Commerce In 10 Years Time

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This week eBay announced that they are expecting the mobile sales on the platform to reach $5 billion USD. This is set to outpace their earlier prediction by a cool 25%. But I don’t believe its going to stop there.

In this article I attempt to foretell the future and see how deep Alice’s rabbit-hole could go with regards to commerce in 10 years time.

Background

Before I make an ill-fated attempt at this, we need to understand some background changes that are currently underway. These are:

  • Apple
    While sadly Steve Jobs passed away, I feel that this is just the end of the beginning for Apple and we have not seen the back of them just yet. It’ll be the devices that this company creates that will be a strong player for most of my predictions.
  • X.Commerce (eBay + PayPal + Others)
    eBay have launched X.Commerce and are going to be making headway into the multi channel marketplace with their recent addition of Magento and a few other local based services (Milo for one). Also, I am making the assumption that PayPal will release contact-less payments to facilitate growth.
  • Alibaba
    Alibaba has bought Auctiva and Vendio, but still has money to burn. This is a dark horse and in my predictions this is the biggest unknown.
  • Amazon
    Amazon is a pure brute and has continuously showed growth regardless of economic situations or challenges from competitors. Amazon will for sure still be around, but I’m not entirely sure how deeply.
  • Peoples Lust for Funds
    More & more people want to break free of the 9-5 routine. This is exceptionally true of the nimble, motivated, educated teenagers that are currently in education right now and the older generations (in their mid-40’s) who are looking for additional retirement funds. While “niche of niche” will give them a fighting chance, the biggest wins will be made in face-to-face services & transactions.
  • Disjointed Service Suppliers
    There are a lot of disjointed service providers that have not worked out that they can work together to bring a larger selection of products when working together than perhaps the larger marketplaces can do currently.
  • The High-Street
    High-Street retailers are starting to “grow a brain” and as more & more board level exec’s realise (“realise” probably a better term than “grow a brain”) that the current (and new) marketplaces are viable channels, that the current list of ~100 well-known brands that are already using eBay will explode.
  • Data Usage & Mobile Handset Usage 
    Global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 & 2015 (source)
    Mobile handset adoption is slow but steady, even with 18 and 214 month contracts slowing the pace, we will see more & more people with ‘smartphones’ and as per the statement above, people’s lust for doing what people do best, communicate, will probably drive this figure much higher.

There are many more influences that are currently underway, Google is one that I have neglected to mention, this is because I feel they will remain as a facilitator to one or more of these or will be replaced by another, however I’m focusing on the above to attempt to make a stab at what the end-game could look like along with some gut-instinct.

My 10 Predictions For Commerce in 10 Years Time

Firstly I can’t tell the future & I certainly don’t have a crystal ball (unless you count a jar of cider), however an amazing topic covered in a book called “Blue Ocean Strategy” (aff link) I recently read has helped me focus & gain clarity on numerous topics.

Part of the identification process of a “blue ocean” is to predict where you consider the natural conclusion of where an environment will go to in the future and commerce is a curious one. Also note that I have left 4 predictions out of this public version as I will be leveraging these personally.

Below are 10 of my personal expectations for commerce, for 10 years time:

  1. 50% of all transactions will be online
    The vast majority of western consumers will have a mobile device that allows them to surf the internet, as such they will hold 50% of the marketplace for all transactions involving goods & services.
  2. Mobile will dominate
    The mobile networks will have rolled out 4, the Internet (especially mobile) will become ultra rich in both written & video content. Mobile devices from one or more of the above will be huge players in this.
  3. Augmented reality will rock
    Augmented reality applications will be real & widely used, especially in gaming. Internet gaming is fun and we’ll see more games like the ones laid out here but augmented reality will become common place for transactional sales. Imagine pointing your phone at a shop and seeing the entire contents in the device before you even enter.
  4. Gestures will be common place
    Gestures to mobile devices will be a reality. Think a cut-down version of kinetic from the XBox. The device will recognise the user and respond to not only voice commands that we already have, but gestures of intent too.
  5. Shock-Horror the desktop will survive
    Consumers will still be using desktop & laptop computers. I mention in the video that cloud computing does not have the grit to do so, this is actually incorrect you can do this via cloud computing, however even in 10 years time, product manufacturers (like Sony or Dell) will still be making the traditional desktop or laptop computer.
  6. The 1st new marketplace
    There will a two new formidable marketplaces, the first will come from the growth of Alibaba and the trade direct from Eastern countries, because of the cost advantage will be hard to beat locally.
  7. The 2nd new marketplace
    The second will come from software providers that already hold the keys to numerous merchants and platforms. If the data held was combined into a single marketplace and solving the other fundamental obstacle of “eye balls” (getting people to view the items/site) then this could be a huge contender, as its the re-manipulation of existing data from existing merchants.
  8. Same day delivery will be available for £1.00
    Same day delivery will be inexpensive & widely used (we’re already seeing this with food providers, Eatsy & Just Eat). Think a mobile version of a highstreet, where instead of going into store, the store will be online and that item you like, will be with you in 30 minutes at your door. Convenience on steroids.
  9. The high-street will still exist
    High-street retailers will still exist, but will be more dynamic & responsive to customers requirements virtually. Interrogative means, such as video to view the products will be widely spread and leveraging the above factor in competition with the online marketplaces, speed of delivery will become a huge factor for them (think of a large food retailer with same day delivery in London) because there will always be a desire for a product or service “now” (or in 30 minutes).
  10. The Revolt
    There will be a revolt against eCommerce and companies that leverage this into a face-to-face commerce situations, such as farmer’s markets will have an amazing time (and highly profitable) with this. People will start to demand a closer, more personal relationship with their suppliers and face-to-face will always rock.

Your Thoughts

Am I a million miles away from what we’re seeing already, what do you think?

Use the comments box below.

Entrepreneurs Can Change the World

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Just press play.

Entrepreneurs Do Change The World

I say they do change the world.

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The eBay “Best Match” Position Bias Modifier Hypothesis

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In this article, I detail further the idea further on a sudo “modifier” that maybe in-place on eBay to restrict or amplify the exposure, thus sales given to merchants as a “group”.

It is only now possible from the discussion in the earlier article titled “Why do eBay Sales Stay Consistent?“. If you’ve not read this article, then I strongly suggest you do as this recognises that there is a limitation to any marketplace and what the implication of this means.

This entire article is hypothetical. I question myself throughout the article and I’ll let you make your mind up if you think I am “on to something” or not.

Hypothesis

I have toiled with this concept in the past, but now I am now even more certain that this is being used and I only now can I fully understand & comprehend the potential motivations behind this.

The hypothesis is:

Part of the “best match” algorithm on eBay modifies the sales velocity made by merchants (outside of the published factors) on a daily basis to share sales across multiple merchants.

Let’s consider this for a moment, as we’ve already considered the ultimate boundaries of what stops a merchant from selling more product, over any single day there is a limited number of customers on a specific marketplace (eBay in this example, but applies to all).

For the sake of example 5% of all eBay buyers are looking to buy footwear today. Now there are lots of “footwear sellers” on eBay, so we’re going to narrow this down further to say that there is 1% of buyers looking for “mens work boots”.

Also for ease, I’m going to use the number of shops on eBay as a reference for the number of sellers with these products, a search here says that we have 180 matching stores, judging that the numbers of items in these shops tail off pretty quickly and an estimate of 80 is fair. Also assuming that only 20% of eBay sellers are eTRS (Top Rated Sellers) then we’re left with just 16 sellers with matching products.

To summarise we have 1% of the total traffic of eBay looking for “mens work boots”, there are a lot of sellers with these products, however only approximately 16 worthwhile considering for this example.

Question 1 – What would I do?

I am now going to ask the question:

If I were eBay, what would I do?

What I would do and the results you’re probably seeing are about the same. Because exactly what I would do, is to share the buyers looking for “mens work boots” across multiple sellers.

To clearly spell this out:

I would purposefully limit the sales across all sellers in a specific category, to keep them all busy.

Thus, 16 “happy sellers”, rather than just 1-2 taking all the sales and thus reducing risk, but still allowing the newer merchants to move up a scale over time.

Question 2 – Which factors?

I’d also take this a stage further and work out what is a sensible sales limit for each of them, like a score rating, but hidden. Some of these are going to be factors included in the published “best match” algorithm, but this is from a different view, a view to spread sales across multiple sellers on a specific day.

Taking into account the following factors:

  • Age of the account
  • Ratio of sales to ALL disputes (including PayPal)
  • Use of a 3rd party tool/API usage
  • If the seller has defaults on their listing/FVF fees
  • eBay Shop level
  • Number of items listed
  • Account level (basic, enterprise and so on)
  • Historical conversion ratio of views v’s sales

And lots of other factors that I have not thought of either (this list could be endless). However to form a profile of the seller, to essentially see how trustworthy they are, what their capabilities are and where they are comfortable.

Using a quote from the ChannelAdvisor Strategy & Support Centre in the “Optimizing For eBay Best Match Results” article:

eBay incorporates the seller’s feedback information and overall performance as a factor in the Best Match search results. The Best Match algorithm gives a preference to users that have high DSR scores and policy compliance at eBay. Those sellers with lower DSR scores are demoted in the search results, which likely makes it even more challenging to achieve sales and improve the ratings.

With the SR2 release in September 2009, eBay introduced Top Rated Sellers as a new status to supercede the previous PowerSeller status. These sellers are promoted directly in the search results with an icon that denotes the seller is one of eBay’s Top Rated Sellers. As the seller account has very high performance on DSRs, the seller’s listings will already be preferenced and be at the top of the search results. With the additional notation from eBay that this seller is one of the Top Rated Sellers on eBay, it will influence the buying decision of shoppers on the site.

We already know that eBay take a number of factors into consideration when returning results already, this was indicated in quite some depth by Olivier Dumon in 2009 at the eBay DevCon, but they’ve removed the video’s from here.

Question 3 – And what would I do with these?

This is curious, because if you have a finite amount of buyers for a finite number of products on a specific day then, spreading the sales around the sellers would be beneficial as it would keep them all interested and busy. Which leads me on to “The Modifier”.

The Modifier

I’ve got a fair idea on how this would be implemented and this article is about the why and the how, so moving into the how, this is how I’d do the above.

At the start of each day I would give each seller a modifier. This modifier would increase and decrease the exposure rate of all the 16 merchants I used in the earlier part of this article for the keyword set.

Starting off with a modifier of 0.5 in the morning, then as the day progresses, I would decrease the modifier to slow sales for a specific merchant if they have already had a strong mornings worth of sales and inversely, if a merchant has had low comparable sales for the morning, increase the modifier, so that more traffic is delivered to that merchant.

Conclusion

This one has been bugging me for quite some time also and have enjoyed finally put it into writing and exploring it as I have formed this article.

We can all understand and would desire eBay to hold off/restrict sales from new merchants (as they do with selling limits), they’re untested businesses; however I’m not quite sure we’re ready yet to entertain the idea that seasoned merchants could also be under such limits also.

Google unlike eBay, who have left pretty hefty hints on what people should do to help them move forwards with their content & rankings. Beyond, what I class as the basics of DSR’s eTRS, recent sales, impressions (to sales ratio) and free shipping, very very little is known. This article could of course be complete rubbish and it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out.

Think of Bingo, but rigged. I’d work out who the top punters are and ensure that they “looked after”, but still leave room for others to also win and to become a “top punter”.

The overall game would to be deliver the results (sales) across all 16 merchants as evenly as possible over time, keeping within the factors I mentioned , so that all of them are kept busy, but not overwhelmed in a single day and allow the possibility for lower merchants to move up, over time.

I’m not suggesting this is a core modifier for results, however it easily could be a second or third level modifier behind eTRS, so that when “best match” is dealing with 16 top rated sellers that appear to be equal, this could be the deciding factor on who gets which sales (by product visibility).

I’ll leave you with this thought/question:

If it[eBay] was me, then I’d certainly entertain such a modifier to smooth out the risk and sales across multiple merchants. Would you?

Comments in the box below!

The Real ‘Best Match’ Part 1 – Why would anyone buy from you?

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The following is a guest post by John from Bamfordtrading. Detailing how we are developing a marketing plan for Bamford Trading.

To the best of my knowledge, John’s not read “The Purple Cow” by Seth Godin. But John “get’s it”. I don’t want to be average or even just plain-old good. I want to be “remarkable”, so does John.

Purple Cow

Would a Purple Cow be remarkable? Would you stop to look?

Part 1 – Why would anyone buy from you?

Unless you are lucky enough to sell unique products with high demand you will know that selling online can be tough. The barriers to entry are low – there is little need for large amounts of capital, it’s not even necessary to have business premises (or even stock in many cases).

Because online retail is an easy business to enter, competition can be fierce. How many times have you said out loud “how can they sell it for that little?”

The Holy Grail of selling online is to have your buyers come to you by preference and not because you are the lowest priced seller or because eBay’s Best Match brings them to you. The marketplaces are all keen to get you to focus on price by pushing towards catalogue selling. Sometimes it seems that price is the only way to compete.

Why else would someone choose to buy from you?

Well it’s a hard question, but one we often ask ourselves. We know that around 10% of orders come from buyers who have bought from us before – this percentage is even higher on our website. We would like to increase this to around 30%.

  • How do you become a supplier of choice?
  • Why would someone choose to buy from you?
  • Who are you?
  • What differentiates you?
  • What’s special about your offering?

We sell mass market products that can be easily sourced from many suppliers so there actually isn’t anything unique about many of the products we sell.

The first step is to agree a ‘positioning statement’. (I hear the groans). Lets agree what and who we are. We know who we are but do our prospective customers?

We could agree to be:

“The lowest price seller of hardware products in Britain”

We would certainly get sales – lots of them – but the winner of this “race to the bottom” wins a business which would soon go bust.

Once we know who and what we are, we begin to build reasons for people to automatically come to us first….

Who and what are you?

To be continued.

 John www.bamfordtrading.com